Death's Jest-Book

by Reginald Hill

  ‘Ah. That detective,’ said Rye coldly.

  She watched Hat out of sight along the street, then opened the gate.

  ‘And did you see anyone?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, there was a man last Saturday morning. I hardly noticed him, but Mrs Gilpin seems to have got a closer look.’

  ‘I’m amazed. Look, do you fancy coming in for a coffee? Unless your husband’s expecting you …’

  ‘Not any more,’ said Myra Rogers. ‘That’s why I needed to find a new flat. Yes, a coffee would be lovely. Are you planning to use that bag again?’

  They were at the front door and Mrs Rogers looked significantly down the basement steps to where the building’s rubbish bins stood.

  ‘My domestic economy hasn’t sunk that low,’ said Rye, smiling.

  She went down the steps, took the lid off a bin and dumped the empty bag inside.

  ‘Now let’s get that coffee,’ she said.

  Letter 4. Received Tues Dec 18th. P.P.

  Sunday Dec 16th

  Night,

  somewhere in England,

  heading north

  Dear Mr Pascoe,

  It was only a few hours since I posted my last letter to you, and yet it seems light years away! Train travel does that to you, doesn’t it? Stop time, I mean.

  You will recall I was on the point of leaving Cambridge in the company of Professor Dwight Duerden of Santa Apollonia University, CA. During the drive to London we talked naturally enough about the recent unhappy events at God’s, and Dwight returned once more to his theme of good from evil, urging me to at least explore the possibility of completing Sam’s book myself and finding a new publisher. He would be returning to St Poll for the holidays, and he promised me again that he would make enquiry of his university press. When we arrived at the Ritz we exchanged addresses and farewells and he instructed his driver to take me anywhere I wanted.

  I had travelled to Cambridge via London, spending the night at Linda’s flat in Westminster, and, rather than risk the purgatory of a Sunday train journey, I decided to take advantage of her kindness again, so that’s where I told the driver to go. The flat is a hangover from the days when Linda was an MP before she spread her wings and flew to Europe. It’s quite small – a tiny bedroom and a tinier sitting room plus a shower – but comfortable enough and conveniently placed. So, having a longish lease, she decided to keep it on as a pied-à-terre. A crone who lives a troglodyte existence in the basement has charge of the spare key and, if you’re on the list of favoured friends, it provides a nice central location to lay your head on a visit to town.

  On my first visit, the scowling crone had required three proofs of identity before she would hand over the key. This time I got a friendlier welcome, but I soon realized this was down to the pleasure of telling me I was too late, the flat was already occupied.

  That’s the trouble with generous people, they can be so indiscriminate.

  I was turning away when she tried to rub salt in my wounds by making it clear it was no use me dossing down on a park bench and coming back in the morning.

  ‘It’s Miss Lupin’s foreign clerical friend,’ she said. ‘He’ll be staying several days.’

  ‘Not Frère Jacques?’ I said. ‘Is he in? I must say hello.’

  And I ran up the stairs before she could reply.

  I had to knock twice before Jacques opened the door. He was clad in slacks and a string vest and looked a bit ruffled. But he smiled broadly to see me and I stepped inside without waiting for an invitation. And stopped dead when I saw he wasn’t alone.

  There was a young woman sitting on the solitary armchair.

  Now Jacques is a man of indisputable holiness but also a man, if I am any judge, in whom the testosterone runs free, and it wouldn’t have surprised me to find that his love of things English included our gorgeous girls.

  But the easy way he introduced me was so guilt-free that I reproved myself for my suspicions, and even more so when I realized what he was saying.

  This lovely young woman regarding me with an indifference worse than hostility was Emerald Lupin, Linda’s daughter. Even if innate holiness and religious vows weren’t enough to keep the old Adam at bay, surely, being a man of considerable good sense, Jacques wasn’t going to take the slightest risk of getting up the nose of one of his movement’s most influential patrons!

  It occurs to me that I am assuming in you an at least passing familiarity with the Third Thought Movement, but in case I’m wrong, let me give you the briefest of outlines.

  To begin at the beginning, which in this case is the movement’s founder. Frère Jacques. He is a brother of the Cornelians, an Order little known outside the region of Belgium which contains its sole monastery, L’Abbaye du Saint Graal. From various sources I gather that Jacques led an active life as a soldier till he was invalided out of the army seriously wounded during service in a UN peace-keeping unit. Happily for him, and for all of us, his birthplace was close by the Cornelian Abbaye and a relapse necessitated a move to their Infirmary, followed by a long convalescence in their Stranger House. During this time he experienced that sense of peace and acceptance of whatever must come which later he was to formulate into the Third Thought philosophy, and eventually he presented himself to the monks as a candidate for admission to their order.

  Their vote was unanimous. I say vote because the Cornelians are peculiar in that all major decisions are taken by the full brotherhood, one monk, one vote. Indeed they are a very liberal and democratic Order, which perhaps explains why Rome not too secretly hopes they will wither on the vine. Their founder, Pope Cornelius, you will recall, was banished and beheaded after a bitter doctrinal dispute in which he argued the Church’s capacity to forgive apostates and other mortal sinners. Not much sign that he’d win the argument today, is there?

  Jacques, not unnaturally, had found himself much preoccupied by death, particularly death unexpected, which it is, he assures me, even in battle. You always think it will be the next guy! He himself had grown up in the heart of the great Flanders killing grounds where it’s still not possible to spend an hour digging in your garden without turning up a button or a bullet or a piece of bone, and none of this had put him off joining the army.

  But his own close encounter had been something of an epiphany, and as he worked in the hospice section of the abbey infirmary, it occurred to him that while the patients there all knew that the end was in sight and were preconditioned to try and come to terms with it, for the vast majority of people, it was a bolt from the blue.

  Something happens, we turn out to be the next guy, and which of us is ready?

  What was needed, he decided, was a kind of hospice of the mind, a state of life like his own during his stay in the Infirmary and Stranger House, which admitted rather than ignored death, a condition of mind like Prospero’s when he returned to Milan where, he says, every third thought shall be my grave.

  Thus was born Third Thought Therapy, whose aim, simply stated, is to give Death his proper standing in our lives, even when youth, health, happiness and prosperity seem to make him an irrelevance. Then whenever he comes, he will not find us unprepared.

  But even Jacques would find it hard to spare a thought for death in the presence of Emerald Lupin!

  I knew Linda had a couple of daughters, but I suppose I’d pictured them as young clones of Linda herself. Don’t misunderstand me. Though far from conventionally beautiful, Linda is not unattractive in a formidable way, like one of those pele towers in the Border country which age and weathering have given a Romantic cast. In her youth, however, I would guess that Linda, like a tower newly built, was just plain daunting!

  But Emerald … ! How shall I convey her to you? Think summer, think sunshine, think golden roses filling the bowers with rich perfume, think soft white doves tumbling through clear blue air – oh, think whatever you judge loveliest and liveliest and most desirable in the worlds of flesh and spirit, and you may get a glimpse of this fair jewel.

>   Do I sound as if I’m in love? Perhaps I am. There’s a first for everything!

  It was explained to me (in too much detail?) that Emerald too had turned up unexpectedly and found Jacques in occupation. Being family she did not require the intermediacy of the crone but had her own key. She had burst in upon him in mid-toilette, but her natural spontaneity and his Continental sang-froid had lifted them high above embarrassment and they’d settled to a debate as to who should vacate the field.

  I doubt if Emerald would have had any qualms about dispossessing me if I’d got there first. But she was bent on assuring Jacques that London was full of friends gagging to offer her hospitality. I believed it. Who in their right mind would turn her away?

  Another factor in giving Jacques possession now appeared in the form of his personal ghost, Frère Dierick, who was going to bed down in the sitting-room chair. He’d been out viewing the sights and seemed as unimpressed by them as he clearly was by sight of me. But the notebook came out of his robe straightaway to record even the most monosyllabic utterance of his great guru.

  Jacques had come to London to help promote the English version of his new book propounding the Third Thought philosophy. He presented me with a copy complete with a flattering inscription, which I let Emerald see in the hope that she’d dilute her bad opinion, but she didn’t seem impressed. Can’t say I blame her. Authors give away their books like drug barons give free snorts, hoping to start an expensive addiction.

  So it was settled. Jacques would remain in situ while Emerald went off to a friend’s.

  ‘But what about you, Franny?’ said Jacques. ‘Perhaps we can squeeze you in here?’

  The thought of a night spent in close proximity to Dierick didn’t appeal, so I said that if I hurried I could execute Plan B, which was catching the last train back to Mid-Yorkshire from King’s Cross.

  ‘I’m heading up to Islington,’ said Emerald. ‘I can give you a lift.’

  She’s warming to me! I thought. Or she just wants to make sure I catch my train!

  I accepted, Jacques said he’d come along for the ride, Dierick was told firmly by Emerald there wouldn’t be room for him in her small car, and the three of us set off. On the stairs, I excused myself, saying I’d meant to use the loo and now it was urgent.

  The tiny loo was off the bedroom. I really did want to use it, believe me, but I couldn’t help noticing as I passed the bed that the coverlet was pretty crumpled. OK, so Jacques had had a lie-down. I did what I had to do and came out. Perhaps there is a bit of the detective in me too, Mr Pascoe, which is why I feel such an affinity with you, but I found myself crouching to look under the bed. And there I found – I know this sounds squalid – a used condom! I felt no shock or surprise, only a little envy.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked a cold voice.

  I looked up to see Frère Dierick standing over me.

  I have no excuse for what I did then. I should have told a lie about dropping some money or something. Instead I stood up with the condom between finger and thumb, pulled open the pocket in his robe where he kept his notebook, and dropped it in, saying, ‘There you go, Dierick. Make sure you put that in your notes.’

  Then I trotted off to join the others.

  At King’s Cross, Jacques said he would see me on to my train. Emerald, illegally parked, had to stay with the car. Not that she’d have wanted to come anyway, I thought disconsolately. But to my surprise, as I stooped to say my thanks, she gave me a peck on the cheek and wished me safe journey.

  And as we walked to my platform, Jacques took the chance to fill me in on Emerald.

  I knew no more of Linda’s family background than that she’d once been married to Harry Lupin, the cut-price airline entrepreneur. After the divorce, Linda got custody of the two children. Emerald, then aged eight, and her sister Musetta, seven. (The latter, it seems, takes after her mother. All the gorgeous genes in the family came Emerald’s way.)

  Emerald after a couple of years got fed up of coming second to politics and decided she wanted to live with Daddy. Six months later, realizing she was now coming third to business and bimbos, she returned to her mother, and thereafter shuttled between both parents and the country’s top boarding schools, each of which in turn declared her uncontrollable and ineducable. Now at twenty she is in her final year at Oxford.

  Meanwhile Musetta, known to her intimates as Mouse, lived down to her sobriquet by keeping very quiet and only emerging from her nest for food. She’s some kind of teacher in Strasbourg, and, as Jacques put it, working on the principle that we love most the apple that falls closest to the tree, she is the pippin of her mother’s eye.

  Emerald on the other hand seems to have bounced and rolled a long long way.

  Without saying anything which would have stood up in a court of law, Jacques conveyed a strong warning that if I wanted to maintain my good relationship with Linda, I should adopt a rigorous hands-off approach to either or both of her daughters.

  You old hypocrite! I thought, recalling the condom.

  But then I looked into those bright blue eyes in that most open and attractive of faces, and I felt ashamed. How could I condemn him for doing what I longed to do?

  We embraced with real feeling. It’s been a long time since someone hugged me in that affectionate familial way. I don’t recall my father, and my mother was never a hugger. But my thoughts as I sat on the train were all of Emerald. I clung desperately to that final peck on the cheek she’d given me. Wasn’t there something of affection in that too? Perhaps she’s screwing Jacques merely as an act of defiance against her mother?

  I needed help, I needed reassurance. For want of anything else, I dug Jacques’ book out of my bag to see if his words could bring me any peace of mind and body.

  I let fate open the pages, and lo! the first paragraph my gaze fell upon was this.

  To say that man must die alone is a trite and fallacious cynicism. Find if you can a man or woman – friend, guru, mentor, father-figure, mother-figure, use what term you will – but someone you can view as the still centre of all your turbulent thoughts – someone before whom you can pour out unstintingly and without reserve all your hopes and fears and passions and desires – and you will have taken a large step towards that peace of mind which is the end of all our endeavours.

  And it hit me, this is what I have found in you, dear Mr Pascoe! This is what I am doing now, writing another letter to you on this oh so slow train journey north. Out there night presses on the grimy window. Lights move by – traffic, street lamps, urban houses, isolated cottages – all indicative of human presence, I know, but not of human community; no, they might as well be will-o’-the-wisps flitting across some dreary bog for all the comfort they bring. And my fellow passengers, each cocooned in that private time capsule we enter on a long train journey, might as well be alien beings from a distant galaxy.

  But I have you, and it hardly matters if I think of you as guru or friend or even, despite your youth, the father-figure I never knew. What does matter is my awareness now that whatever my initial motivation in writing, I am using you as a Third Thought Therapy! I hope you don’t mind. Perhaps you might find it in you to reply to me, or even (dare I ask it), call round to see me now I’m back in Mid-Yorkshire? Which is where, incredibly, the Dalek in control of the train intercom system has just announced that shortly we will be arriving.

  Oh dream of joy! is this indeed The light-house top I see? Is this the hill? Is this the kirk? Is this mine own countree?

  I do believe it is. I’ll finish this tomorrow.

  Hello again! How quickly things change. Just in case you did think of dropping in on me over the next few days, don’t bother, I’m not here. Or rather, not there!

  Here’s what happened. I awoke this morning quite early – Syke conditioning! I’m not due back at work till tomorrow and my renewed hopes that I might once more be able to find a publisher for Sam’s Beddoes biography made me keen to get back to work on it. I headed straight out to
the university library, planning to spend the day there, probably without a break, which is the way I like to work once I’ve got my teeth into something.

  But I’d hardly started work before I was interrupted by the arrival of Charley Penn.

  Charley has many excellent qualities and he has been most helpful in encouraging my literary ambitions, giving me many tips both creative and practical. In all of us there is both light and shade; in some one predominates, in others, the other. But in Charley there is a darkness which sometimes blots out the brightness altogether. Where does it spring from? Perhaps it’s part of the German psyche. Though he has taken on much colouring from his Yorkshire upbringing, he is in many ways a true scion of his Teutonic ancestry.

  It was Charley who drew my attention to a poem of Arnold’s called ‘Heine’s Grave’. Fine poem, a moving tribute to the dead poet and a sharp assessment of what made him tick. In it Arnold speculates that it was Heine that Goethe had in mind when he wrote that some unnamed bard had ‘every other gift but wanted love’.

  So it seems to me with Charley. The one person who drew love out of him and returned it to him was Dick Dee. Dee’s death and the revelation that he was probably the killer of so many people, including, God damn his soul, my beloved Sam, has quite overthrown Charley. Oh, for much of the time he seems the same, saturnine, savagely humorous, unblinkingly perceptive, but that darkness which always exists in the depths of a pine forest has in his case now spread out to envelope even the crowns of the trees.

  Evidence of this came when I asked him what brought him here away from his usual perch in the town reference library.

  ‘She’s away on holiday, so I thought I’d take a break too,’ he said laconically.

  I didn’t need an explanation. She is Ms Pomona who came so close to being the Wordman’s final victim. Charley is so convinced of his friend Dee’s innocence that he has persuaded himself there must have been a conspiracy to conceal the truth. But I’m sure that you know all about this already, Mr Pascoe, as you and Rumbleguts, who were first on the scene after Dee’s death, are marked down as the head conspirators! Charley, I think, has the Gothic fancy that his accusing presence in the Reference when Ms Pomona is on duty will eventually wear her down and bring a confession.